So, let’s explore what makes a good email marketing campaign.

Why content is king in email marketing

There are lots of email marketing providers quoting.000xp per email for your broadcasts – but they’re just offering you a machine – not a marketing service.

Granted, a broadcasting facility is needed but that’s the least of your issues if you choose to embark on an email marketing campaign – you want your emails to be read, and in an ideal world, you want to generate a response – that’s where it gets interesting!

So, let’s talk about content – it needs to be intelligent, pertinent, short and to the point, and it needs to address the recipient correctly i.e. customers are not the same as prospects and need to be treated differently.

Want to know about the biggest content pitfall?

It’s not being able to resist the temptation to talk about yourself – what your business does. With this ‘fleeting medium’, you need to show the reader that you have an answer to their problem – so content must be benefit-led. Remember, it’s not about you – it’s about your customers!

So, don’t say “We sell IT systems and telecoms equipment” – say, “How would you like to improve the efficiency of your workforce?”

Here’s why this approach works…

Take Anna, she’s an HR manager, and she heard from Paul, the manager of a recruitment consultant last week. Paul just dropped her a line, via email, to let her know that he has a current salary level survey for her industry and should she wish to learn more, he’s happy to talk. That way she can ensure she holds onto her best staff, and she’s not paying over the odds.

Now Anna feels special, Paul has taken the trouble to get in touch, and a relationship has begun. Paul hasn’t tried to sell to Anna, but next time Anna is looking to recruit, where do you think she will go? And what’s the likelihood that Anna will pass on this information to others in her industry, recommending Paul along the way?

This approach works for any industry, and it can work for yours too.

So, how often should you send out an email broadcast?

Pitching the frequency of your communications right is key to its success – too often and you’ll start to upset some people, not often enough and they may think you don’t care. Actually, they’ll just forget you even exist, especially if your competitors have been in touch.

There are numerous factors that influence frequency:

The nature of your content – if it’s topical – you need to send more often.
If you’re building up intrigue for a launch – you may wish to tease your audience several times over a few days or weeks before your big reveal.

And if you’re nurturing relationships that you hope will turn into business, you need to maintain a sustained presence that’s not too oppressive. You don’t know when your prospect is ready to buy, but if you maintain regular contact, your business will be on their radar when they start shopping.

The best way to decide is to put yourself in the seat of the recipients of your emails – how often do you think they’d like to hear from you?

To some extent it depends on the message – if you have special offers that change weekly, they’ll need to hear from you each week. If you’re nurturing a relationship in a more gentle way with a value message – once a month will keep you on their consciousness without over doing it.

It’s all about planning – who you are emailing, and what it is you want to say.
That’s why targeting your emails is also important. The closer you can target your messages, the more pertinent they can be, and you’ll be able to stay in contact more frequently, because you will be telling them things they’re happy to hear. Email marketing is NOT a ‘one size fits all’ marketing channel!

The quality of your email data therefore is another key factor in the success or failure of your email marketing campaigns.

Why good data matters in email marketing

We all understand one of the basic lessons in marketing – target marketing – identifying who you need to communicate with and how best to reach that audience.

Yet when it comes to email marketing, one of the most common mistakes is to send one message to all – and that’s because it’s cheap and easy to do.

But in most cases it doesn’t work. It results in masses of unsubscribe requests – shutting you out from potentially interested parties – people who may have been interested in your products or service, but who were not communicated with properly.

The last thing you want to do is upset anyone, so be mindful that you are intruding on their time, and make sure you’re doing it in a nice way.

Good data is made up of a list of contacts that meet a certain criteria – those that you have carefully selected so that you can talk to them on their terms. And by doing so, you start to build a relationship that you can nurture until such a point as your contact is ready to make a purchase.

And let’s not forget your customers (those that have actually bought from you) – they are an important asset to your business, and know about your business already. But do they know everything they need to know to choose to buy from you again? You can keep them up to date with news via email marketing – special exclusive offers, sneak previews, trade secrets etc.- they all serve to make them feel special and retain loyalty. But you can only do this if your data is segmented so you know who your customers are – and who of those customers has recently become inactive and need extra attention.

So, it’s important to get close to your data, to understand who is on it, how they are behaving, so you can decide how you are going to communicate with them.

Once you’ve decided who to email, and what to say, how can you maximise response levels? Think of your subject line as a headline in a newspaper, or a magazine advertisement – it needs to catch attention or the article won’t get read. It’s the same with emails.

Are your subject lines doing it for you?

‘This week’s top offers’, ‘Save money on printer cartridges’, ‘Buy software online’ – we’ve all seen them, and they all end up in our junk folders – because they simply do not do it for us!

If you want your audience to sit up and listen, the subject line is the most important part of the email – if it doesn’t catch attention, the rest of the email won’t get read.

Be bold, be controversial, be witty, be intriguing. Keep it short and to the point – and don’t forget to put your subject matter in context and be mindful of the people you are writing to.

Familiarity is OK with warm prospects and customers. It’s not OK with cold prospects, and can breed a resistance from potentially great contacts who are offended by your familiar approach.

“Richard Branson’s got it – have you?”
Wouldn’t you like to know what it is Richard Branson has? This line creates intrigue – it compels the reader to open the email.

Richard Branson has a high profile – now if you’re a PR company and send out an email with a subject line that says – “Do you need more publicity?” do you think it will get the same reaction?

What kind of responses can you expect to receive?

If you do the job well, and pitch your emails right, you’ll receive warm replies that open conversations.
So, is email marketing for you?

Hopefully you’ll have a better idea now of how email marketing can help boost sales for your business, and how to go about using email the right way. The principles we’ve discussed apply to practically any business and industry sector, and so long as you follow these golden rules to ensure you maintain credibility, you should look forward to achieving a great success rate.

Julie Kenyon – julie@essentiamail.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6913627

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Exhibition spaces are sold out – but there is free attendance for delegates. So come on down and find out more about EssentiaMail or give us a call on 0117 947 6090. We’d be happy to talk about how email marketing can transform your leads into clients, create new business leads and keep your existing customers coming back for more.

Email marketing is a great way to achieve all of these and more. At EssentiaMail, we work with all kinds of companies adding email campaigns to their existing marketing strategies and we get great results.

If this sounds like something of interest call us on 0117 947 6090. Our director Nick Sladek will be happy to talk to you about what exactly we do.

Peter Jones – Peter@essentiamail.com

This call came from a contact in based in Oxford who is now our new client who would never have known of our services were it not for EssentiaMail. Thanks for writing such appealing copy, you are an integral part of our marketing mix.

Director of a Video Production Company

Network Central – Bridgwater Thursday 22nd September
Nick will be at EssentiaMail’s stand at Network Central’s Bridgwater event at The Exchange from 9:30am to 3:30pm.
For more details click here.

The FSB Best of Bristol Exhibition – Tuesday 27th September
Nick will be at Bristol City Football Club from 10am to 3.pm.
For more details click here .

All EssentiaMail emails include an unsubscribe link. This is a one click simple unsubscribe where a contact is removed from a contact list instantly.

EssentiaMail ensure that any new data provided or acquired by a client is processed against their previous data for duplicates and unsubscribed contacts.

When a client leaves EssentiaMail we ensure that they are notified of all unsubscribed contacts in their data.

Anti-Spam Policy

(1) What is spam?

In the context of electronic messaging, spam refers to unsolicited, bulk or indiscriminate messages, typically sent for a commercial purpose.

We have a zero-tolerance spam policy.

(2) Credit

This policy is based on an SEQ Legal template. Other SEQ Legal templates include intellectual property rights contracts.

(3) Automated spam filtering

Our messaging systems automatically scan all incoming email [and other] messages, and filter-out messages that appear to be spam.

(4) Problems with spam filtering

No message filtering system is 100% accurate, and from time to time legitimate messages will be filtered-out by our systems.

If you believe this has happened to a message you have sent, please advise the message recipient by another means.

You can reduce the risk of a message being caught by the spam filters by sending the message in plain text (i.e. no HTML), removing any attachments, and ensuring that your messages are scanned for malware before dispatch.

[(5) User spam

We provide a facility that enables users to send [email messages / private messages] to others. Users must not use this facility to send unsolicited, bulk or indiscriminate messages, whether or not for a commercial purposes. Full terms and conditions concerning the use of the facility are set out in [document].]

[(6) Receipt of unwanted messages from us

In the unlikely event that you receive any message from us or sent using our systems that may be considered to be spam, please contact us using the details below and the matter will be investigated.]

(7) Changes to this anti-spam policy

We may amend this anti-spam policy at any time by publishing a new version on this website.

(8) Contact us

Should you have any questions about this anti-spam policy, please contact us using the details set out below:

info@essentiamail.com

Hard bounce – when an email isn’t delivered due to a technical failure of some kind i.e. the mailbox doesn’t exist or the website has been deleted.

Soft bounce – when an email has received a message back from the address which requires attention.

Hard bounces
With hard bounces there isn’t actually much you can do. Double-check the spelling of the contact or the domain details. Check if it’s actually a co.uk instead a .com.

Hard bounces are usually a dead end. Maybe the company has gone out of business or been rebranded… Or that email contact has been deleted from the companies systems.

Soft bounces
Soft bounces provide slightly more thought. When you receive bounce emails ask yourself “does it need action”?

Out of office – If a contact is out of the office for the day or away on holiday for a week there is no problem. Just wait for them to read your email when they return to the office. There is no point replacing someone who is going to read the email soon.

Maternity cover or extended leave – Sometimes contacts who are out of the office for a long time will need replacing. Often these soft bounces will contain a replacement contact’s email. It’s worth replacing contacts who are aren’t going to be able to read your emails for a long time – their replacement may find your email useful.

Contacts who have left the company – If someone has been made redundant or left the company their auto responder will often point you in the direction of a replacement or someone else who can help. Hopefully this will include their email details.

Failures – Sometimes an email will send a hard bounce in the form of a soft bounce. This is confusing but it’s just the way some systems work.

At EssentiaMail we manage your data for you as part of our service. Unlike other email marketing services we update your contact lists for you so if you receive any bounces that require action please pass it on to us and we’ll make any changes that we can.

So when you receive a soft bounce that requires attention like maternity cover, extended leave, contacts who have left a company or the message has failed – just forward this email onto us and we will make the changes necessary. And if it doesn’t need attention just ignore the email.

If you have any questions about bounces or email marketing in general you can call us on 0117 947 6090 or drop me an email on peter@essentiamail.com and I can get in touch with you.

Peter Jones – Peter@essentiamail.com